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Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Not throwing in the towel just yet ...

Steve Golay writes in the comments:

We're stuck here while the culture and world around us is going to Hell in that infamous basket.

America is on the path of 'going dhimmi'. Half our grandsons will most likely be Muslims. The hookup between Jihadist Islam and the Internatioanl Left is bind and shrink the Church. 14-year-old boys are crucified in Bhagdad neighborhoods - doors away from the safety of the Green Zone. How soon will they raise crosses in downtown St Louis?

Totalitarian Islam scents its victory and isn't even bothering with that infamous Muslim sanction to double-talk.

I do not say that simply for effect. Close attention to the state of the world since the Mid-Term Elections confirms the observation. That attention may be souring the glee some of us had with the results - the black-eyeing that lying SOB.

As I think Victor can attest (though I partially blame his influence ;) you'd be hard-pressed to find someone more cynical than me about either the war or the current state of world affairs. In my opinion, the mid-term elections almost certainly sealed the fate of the non-terrorist inhabitants of Iraq and I find much of the analysis that takes place here to be rather compelling with one exception: the lack of mention of al-Qaeda, which is now the dominant force within the Sunni insurgency. Most of the American public, politicians, and commentators do not want to talk about this for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that doing so requires them to frame phased withdrawl within parameters that they are likely to find politically inconvenient.

Concerning fears of the US sinking into dhimmitude, I would note that while an ad-hoc coalition of transnational progressives and conservative "realists" appear to once again be ascendant within the US at the expense of neoconservatives and traditional conservatives, their power will only be secure until a visible public crisis emerges, at which point the inherent weaknesses and contradictions of those positions will be exposed and they will likely fall from power. I think that we would do well to remember that the Democrats did not so much win the mid-term elections as the GOP lost it. A major component of this is due to the fact that Bush has attempted to balance Winston Churchill's foreign policy with Calvin Coolidge's domestic policy and the synergy has been lacking, to say the least. Judging from the Gates confirmation hearings, it seems to me that he is now retreating from the former as well, which should deprive him of all but the most tribal GOP support.

This is a massive defeat and setback and, make no mistake, one that is likely going to cost tens of thousands of lives, most of them initially being Muslim civilians. I fully expect al-Qaeda to control large swaths of the Iraqi Sunni regions as well as most Somalia and Pakistan, including at least some of the latter's nuclear arsenal. When combined with the emergence of a nuclear Iran that I see as inevitable at this point due to our own inaction, that makes for a very worrisome picture for the future that will probably involve at least one American city being engulfed in a mushroom cloud at some future date.

That said, even if al-Qaeda starts nuking cities I don't expect mass conversions to Islam any time soon. Becoming a Salafist isn't liking joining the Communist Party and those most likely to take that step lack the sufficient resolve to believe in anything, which is one of the reasons why they're being rolled over right now. In this regard conversion to Islam would probably be an improvement for them since it would require at least some semblance of core convictions.

So let's not get overly alarmist here. Islamists are not likely to be setting up the Caliphate stateside any time soon and even in Europe it'll probably take them at least another decade before they're ready to move. Only I don't think they'll make it that far because of their tendency to overreach. A lot of people are going to die in the coming conflict that everyone except the chattering classes can see coming, but I don't plan on giving into despair just because we lost the opening round.

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

JOSEPH D'HIPPOLITO SAYS...

Several fundamental problems exist.

First, the president and his cabinet failed to define exactly what victory would be in Iraq. IMO, "victory" would be preventing the establishment of an authoritarian regime that terrorist could use as a base, just like Afghanistan. That's why the Bush Administration emphacized democratic change. If I can figure that out -- and I'm no hotshot geopolitical analyst -- why can the Adminsitration state that?

Second, the American people have been besieged with so much propaganda from the MSM that they have been dulled from seeing the larger picture. Iraq, indeed, is part of a larger war that the Muslims wish to initiate to establish their international, totalitarian, genocidal Caliphate.

Then again, Americans aren't really that good in understanding long-term geopolitical consequences. Just look at anything that Rod Dreher blogged in the run-up to the mid-term elections -- and Dreher is a man whom I admire tremendously for his courage during the clerical sex-abuse crisis.

Third, there's the brainwashing that the Educational Establishment has done on the vast majority of young Americans. The EE has refused for nearly 30 years to teach the fundamental philosophical values that govern and define this country. In their place, the EE has advocated a superficial sense of moral equivalence and politically correct drivel designed not to offend anybody.

Torq, let me address this point:Becoming a Salafist isn't liking joining the Communist Party and those most likely to take that step lack the sufficient resolve to believe in anything, which is one of the reasons why they're being rolled over right now. In this regard conversion to Islam would probably be an improvement for them since it would require at least some semblance of core convictions.

I must strenuously disagree. First, Islam is like the Eagles' Hotel California: You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. Second, Nazis had core convictions, too. Pat Buchanan has core convictions. Does that mean that their core convictions are moral or socially desireable ones?

Finally, on a tangental point, the Church must revisit the thinking that governed Nostra Aetate, for it no longer applies in this world. As far as Islam goes, our Church needs more Charles Martels and fewer Karol Wojtylas.

Whatever the problems we face in Iraq, they ain't gonna be solved by following the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group (ISG).

I love Mark Steyn's comments about the work of the ISG over at National Review Online's Corner ("Rich" is Rich Lowry):

Isn’t the main problem with the Iraq Study Group that it’s just majorly lame? Almost anybody could crank out this kind of generalized boilerplate (“We were told by a general/a translator/my taxi driver/my Ukrainian hooker…”), and most of us could do it without a budget of gazillions of dollars and an Annie Leibovitz photo session.

Of course, Syria “should” do this and Iran “should” do that and, if they were Sandra Day O’Connor, I’m sure they would. But they’re not. And the only specific strategic proposal is a linkage between Iraq and a “renewed and sustained commitment” to a “comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace” – which concedes the same ludicrous rationale that the Saudi King Abdullah and all the rest of them make: that one tiny ten-mile sliver of Jews is the reason why millions of Muslims from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Emirates are mired in dictatorships, failed economies and jihadist fever. For the Baker group to endorse this clapped out pan-Arabism is disgusting. An “Arab-Israeli peace”? What does that mean? What exactly is Israel doing to Iraq, or Tunisia, or Qatar, or any other Arabs except those in the “Palestinian territories”? To frame it in those terms is to adopt the pathologies of the enemy. Shame on Baker, Hamilton and all the rest.

As for the insight on page 94 that so impressed Rich, yes, it’s true that the DIA and other analytical agencies don’t have a lot of strength in depth. But why is that? It’s certainly not because the US taxpayer isn’t showering them with dollars. It’s to do with a bureaucratic torpor that has proved almost totally resistant to any attempts to reform it since 9/11. And, while we may well “engage” with Syria and Iran to no effect, and US troops may well put their left foot in and take their right foot out, the one thing you can guarantee won’t be shaken all about is the torpid bureaucracy – of which this stillborn report is yet one more example.